Max Richter announces new piano version of ‘SLEEP’ and special London BFI IMAX event

Max Richter has announced a piano reworking of his 2015 album ‘SLEEP’, as well as a special event at the London’s BFI Imax.

The EP, titled ‘SLEEP: Piano Edition’, will arrive on March 15, coinciding with World Sleep Day.

It features three extended reimagined tracks for solo piano from the eight-and-a-half-hour album, with short edits of each track set to be issued as singles, including as Dolby Atmos versions.

“The piano is where I go to daydream, because composing, in a way, is daydreaming as well,” said Richter in a press release. “It’s trying to encounter other aspects of your mind, things maybe you’re not so aware of consciously.”

The first single, ‘Dream 0 (piano short edit)’ is out now – check it out below.

Two more singles, ‘Non Eternal’ and ‘Return 2’, will be released on February 12 and March 12 respectively.

To celebrate the EP, a special audio-visual meditation ‘90 Minutes of SLEEP’ will take place at London’s BFI IMAX Waterloo on March 17. It will be the first ever spatial presentation of music from the ‘SLEEP’ with visuals custom-made for the UK’s largest cinema screen.

Tickets for the event, which will be introduced by Richter himself, are now on sale – you can buy yours here.

Elaborating further on the reimagining of ‘SLEEP’, Richter said: “One of the two main themes is very slow-moving, pulsed piano music – the instrument is one of the main characters in the piece.

“I don’t really believe in closed works of art,” he explained. “I’m very interested in the music remaining alive, not frozen, and in what the listeners bring to the piece. When we see a sculpture, we don’t always see it the same way we walk around it. We see different angles, different aspects. And in a way, this is maybe revealing different aspects of ‘SLEEP’ itself.

“’SLEEP’ is a piece about finding a place to pause, a place to rest,” concluded the composer. “Because even though the world is very exciting, it’s also now very exhausting, especially psychologically, with the advent of 24-hour news, social media, the internet completely saturating our lives. We’re beset by ecological, social, political troubles. Obviously, the best way we can deal with these is to have a clear mind. In order to do that, we need to find ways to kind of settle our minds down. And SLEEP offers one such opportunity.”

Last year, Richter revisited some of the ‘SLEEP’ material from an electronic perspective for ‘SLEEP: Tranquility Base’.

In December, Richter announced a new audio workshop, SRM Sounds, created in collaboration with his multimedia production studio, Studio Richter Mahr.